


On Your Marks, Get Set... Bake!

by Agasthiya



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Baking, Baking Contest AU, Cake Symbolism, Flirting, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, The Great British Bake Off inspired, anxiety mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 08:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18385127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agasthiya/pseuds/Agasthiya
Summary: TheBaranovskaya Brioches' Bake Offpresents the opportunity of a lifetime for amateur bakers from all over the world: to be sponsored by Lilia Baranovskaya herself and achieve their biggest baking dreams. Yuuri, whose potential and willpower are as strong as his insecurities, aims for excellence and nothing, not even his massive infatuation for another participant, will drive him away from it.When everything goes wrong in the meringue challenge and puts his spot in jeopardy, he ends up getting help from the most unexpected of places.





	On Your Marks, Get Set... Bake!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> It's been a while since I posted anything. I started this fic as a way to unwind from another WIP (which I started as a way to unwind from _another_ WIP...). Initially, it was meant to be a short ficlet that I would post on Tumblr, but these things happen. This idea came into my mind over two years ago, and I didn't think I would ever write it, so morale of the story: no matter how old, never discard your ideas!
> 
> It's not exactly a GBBO AU, as in it isn't written in a TV show format. I allowed myself liberties and only took what I considered the most interesting, aka the baking, the setting and the atmosphere. I am by no means a professional baker, even though baking is slowly turning into one of my passions. Despite the time it took, writing this fic was a lot of fun, and if it makes you hungry, I'll consider it a success. (Also, please, enjoy the banner, it was hell to edit!)
> 
> Special thanks to Raiza and OJJ for the beta, for helping with the summary and banner, and for listening to all my whining, to Basia for the support and kindness, and to Hegel for always being there for me <3
> 
> (rated T for a few innuendos)

“You’re really scaring me right now, friends, I see nothing ready… only twenty minutes left!”

Panicked exclamations erupt in the tent upon hearing Phichit’s sudden warning and a renewed frenzy takes over the competitors. It’s so easy to lose track of time when baking, and the last few minutes are always the most intense. Every second counts. Yuuri runs to the fridge to retrieve his half-spherical cake as well as decorative elements he left to cool for the ultimate and most important step: assembling.

“Raise your hand if you hate meringue now,” Sara says, letting go of the pastry bag to raise hers. Once she’s satisfied with the number of agreements, she goes back to piping her (soon-to-be) hedgehog.

“It haunts me. I dreamed about it last night,” Christophe says, taking a baking sheet out of the oven. “I was locked to a chair in front of a mountain of meringues and Minako and Lilia wouldn’t let me go until I ate everything to the last crumb.”

Yuuri grimaces. Chris told him about it in detail at breakfast, and just imagining it turned his stomach. Not that he can’t enjoy a good meringue, but he doubts that a pizzaiolo would get pizza for dinner after a long day of work.

He’s baked more meringue in the last three days than he has in his entire life and, like for Chris, it has invaded his mind in the form of nonsensical stress dreams. Except he doesn’t handle them as humorously as Chris does, which is why he keeps them all to himself. The latest one involved the Alaska bombe they had to bake yesterday for the technical challenge: it looked perfect, but when he brought it to the judges’ table, it turned into some weird potato cake. “Yuuri, this is off-topic,” Minako kept saying. Yuuri tried to explain, but his voice sounded slurred and none of his speech made sense. He woke up in a sweat, alone in the darkness of his hotel room.

From fine yokan to rich black forest, he gets into everything, but meringue has never been his forte. So when Minako and Lilia announced it as the main theme for this fifth week of competition, his first thought was ‘I’m fucked’. As it often is. He reminded himself he’s survived all the challenges so far and, above all else, that the power of the coveted golden hat would accompany him through this, and thus the initial doubt faded to make way for his usual determination.

The golden hat, a round chef hat ornamented with a thin gold trim, is the emblem that rewards a baker for their prowess or remarkable progress throughout the week. Basically, the biggest confidence boost one could ask for. Minako and Lilia, aka ‘the queens’, deliver it at the end of the third day right before the moment everyone dreads: the elimination of a participant. It is Yuuri’s second time winning it and he considers it as much a tangible proof of validation from the (demanding) judges as a guaranteed spot for the following week.

Still, after the signature bake (he thought Minako would have appreciated him making karumeyaki, and she did, though she made it clear that coming from him she expected more audacity) and the technical challenge (while he followed the recipe to a T, or at least the voluntarily incomplete instructions Lilia deigned to leave, they found a dozen mistakes to dissect), Yuuri can feel his goal of keeping the golden hat at least two weeks in a row slip through his fingers.

While he hates winning by only a hair’s breadth, at this point, he just wants to do his best so as to not get kicked out. Leaving is absolutely not an option. Yuuri has dreamed of entering this competition for too long.

Over the years, he has garnered quite a large followership on Instagram as a mysterious pastry enthusiast. The only things people know about him are his first name and that he lives somewhere in Kyūshū. He has never posted a selfie despite the high demand (why are people so interested? They follow him for his desserts, not for him as a person), and has always denied offers to participate in baking shows or create a sponsored Youtube channel.

He loves watching baking shows. Joining one though… that’s a different story. On the one hand, he knows how much the exposure would help. On the other hand, these offers come off as a disguised pressure to publicly reveal his identity. His heart swings back and forth between sharing his passion with the world and cultivating his privacy. 

That’s why the _Baranovskaya Brioches’ Bake Off_ (or more colloquially _BBBO_ ) organised by Lilia’s famous bakery was an ideal compromise. No camera, no shooting, no script. Only a private yet highly selective competition that aims to find skillful, innovative amateur bakers worldwide, and help them achieve their dreams. It constitutes a springboard towards meeting renowned bakers from all over the world, accessing fully funded extensive training programmes, publishing your own recipe book… or, eventually, opening your own bakery anywhere you want.

Since there are only twelve spots available per year, Yuuri had to send his candidature three times before finally being shortlisted. He didn’t think he would ever get that far, but soon here he was, amongst the twelve lucky ones.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

So Yuuri has to put all his energy into the showstopper, and prove he can bake beyond everyone’s imagination, even with elements he’s not comfortable with.

As he begins setting up his decoration to not stand here twiddling his thumbs while his meringue finishes cooking, Yuuri takes a look at his seven co-bakers. While it’s part of the rules, he still has trouble accepting that in a few hours, one of them will have to leave. Seeing the group be creamed off has gotten more and more difficult to handle for everyone, both because no matter how cheesy it sounds they have become a small family, and because the noose is tightening. The complexity of the challenges and therefore the fear of being eliminated increases as weeks go by.

Not wanting to quit feels selfish since it automatically means wishing elimination upon someone else. Everyone here deserves, and has the means to achieve their dreams.

JJ is ambitious, and the judges appreciate his high self-confidence. Otabek is very serious and meticulous, qualities that make him excel at technical challenges. Guang Hong has a gift for harmonising flavours no one would have thought about. Ketty is an artist and her vivid imagination never fails to leave everybody speechless, especially during signature bakes where she revisits great classics with virtuosity. As for the others…

Yuuri’s timer beeps, interrupting his stream of thought. He crouches down to check on his igloo-shaped dome through the oven door. The little bricks have retained their shapes and white colour, and are holding up well together. Perfect. He turns off the oven to start the cooling process slowly.

“Hey, Yuuri?” Sara calls behind him. “How’s your genius idea going?”

“Haha, it’s doing okay for now. Hopefully I vapourised enough release agent around my mould…”

“It’s gonna be beautiful! Believe me, I saw you. This is such a cool trick, I’ll have to try it next time.”

Sara grins encouragingly and returns her attention to her hedgehog. It looks adorable and technically impeccable, with an impressive level of detail.

A winter hedgehog had been Yuuri’s first idea, but he gave up on it as soon as he heard Sara tell Phichit about her project. Making the same thing as another participant is out of the question. He would have paled in comparison in more ways than one, since she basically grew up with Italian meringue. It requires whipping hot sugar syrup into egg whites, and it is the hardest type to master. Once you do though, you can do anything you want. If someone can make a golden hat-worthy hedgehog, it’s her.

Similarly, Chris, the first golden hat winner of the season, has the advantage of being born in a country where meringue is a speciality. While Swiss meringue, which consists in heating egg whites and icing sugar over a water bath, is less light than French and less stable than Italian, Chris has more than one trick up his sleeve to turn these flaws around, and has actually used it as a challenge to impress the judges. So far, it has worked well for him.

Yes, they all have tremendous potential. But none of them must forget there’s a champion horse racing by their side.

“Viktor?”

Like he’s been called as well, Yuuri turns his head to the right. A reflex. Ketty proudly brandishes a bowl above her face.

“You were right! The ganache has softened on its own, I can finally use it!”

“Yay!” Viktor gives her a double thumbs up. “See? I told you you didn’t need to start over!”

“I’d never have finished on time. Thank you so much, you saved me.”

“No problem, I forget lots of stuff in the freezer myself.”

Viktor tilts his chin backwards, gently rotates his head side to side and, once the tightness in his neck is relieved, gets back to work.

_Stop staring,_ Yuuri thinks. _It’s none of your business. You know that as soon as you pay him too much attention, you’ll be done for._

To no avail. Yuuri literally has to tear his gaze away, like a stubborn magnet.

Viktor, the only Russian representative since Mila’s departure last week, always bakes on Yuuri’s right, across the aisle. Which is both a blessing and a curse. Everything about Viktor is distracting. His luminous hair, so light it looks like silver, held back by cute clips while he bakes. His graceful silhouette dressed in an apron tied behind his back in a perfect bow. His gentle hands, never making a sudden move. His little pout when something doesn’t turn out as he planned, and his light frown when he attempts to understand why and fix it. His bouncy, bubbly attitude when he’s happy.

Yuuri’s willpower not to stare only lasts a few seconds. His eyes, following a familiar pattern, go down from Viktor’s face to his hands to his creation.

Today, he’s made a two-tiered cake with a delicate white frosting, reminiscent of a small wedding cake. Upon noticing the bowl of red berries next to it, Yuuri realises it is actually a pavlova. It sure looks delicious, at least from what he can see from afar, but isn’t it too simple for a showstopper?

As if to contradict the statement in the gentlest ways, Viktor places on top of the cake a big, beautiful swan, with a neck so thin Yuuri wonders how it didn’t crack, and wings so smooth and elegant they look like whipped cream. He places a second, identical one so that their necks form a heart, and adds a splash of colour by surrounding them with raspberries and redcurrants.

Yuuri feels silly. Of course the cake wasn’t finished. And even then, design is not everything. The taste matters just as much, if not more. A cake is an ephemeral piece of art. No matter how aesthetically pleasing it is, if it doesn’t delight your taste buds, what’s the point? And when it comes to flavours, Viktor never fails to surprise. The fact that he almost brought Lilia to tears with his moon-shaped blueberry-chocolate-lemon pies two weeks ago speaks for itself.

Yuuri imagines the taste, the texture on his tongue. The sweet richness of the meringue counterbalanced by the acidity of the red berries… His mouth is watering in anticipation.

His favourite part of the day is after the jury deliberation, when the pressure’s dropped and everyone gets to relax around a cup of tea and a slice of each other’s creations. The moment he gets to know Viktor better, each cake revealing something new about him. After hours of intense baking, Yuuri generally wants to eat anything but sugar, but his stomach always makes an exception for Viktor’s pastries.

God, his pastries… Yuuri can only describe them as warm cuddles. Each bite holds all the love and passion Viktor pours into them. It overflows, it sparkles, it heals the soul. Yuuri will never forget the first one he ate, a poodle-shaped brioche filled with applesauce and cinnamon. The brioches tasted divine, and Viktor’s pure joy as he explained to the judges he made them in honour of Makkachin, his pet poodle, and that he wanted to have a little piece of her with him, hit Yuuri right in the heart.

Love. An abstract ingredient Viktor uses with flying, shining, deep colours.

Yuuri has been dying to tell him he, too, owns a pet poodle that he misses a whole lot, and that he understands. To tell him how much he admires and adheres to his vision of baking. To tell him… Well. Anything.

Here lies the problem.

Despite their proximity during the challenges and all the things they have in common, Yuuri has never dared speak to him. He’s so… so much. Not that they’ve never interacted, it would be difficult considering their team stays almost constantly together even outside the tent. But it essentially boils down to smiles exchanged from afar, accidental touches during meals and monosyllabic small talk.

To this day, their most meaningful interactions remain when Yuuri passed on the golden hat to him with a humble “Congratulations”, and when Viktor put it back on Yuuri’s head a week later with a warm “Reunited once again!”, to the applause of Phichit, the judges and the other participants.

Not the ideal setting for a private conversation.

If only they could have been alone, just for a minute…

Until he gathers up his courage to make it happen, Yuuri will take what he’s given. Viktor’s cakes, and the possibility that he might be anointed ‘Best baker of the week’ for the second time – and that Yuuri might therefore stand close to him again tonight, crowning his beautiful head with the golden hat.

God, he sounds desperate.

“Hey, has anyone seen the gold dust?” Chris asks. “I couldn’t find it on the shelves.”

“Uh yes, sorry, I have it,” Yuuri replies, spotting it next to one of his dirty bowls. He used it earlier while making his lemon juice and agar-agar frozen pond – not with very conclusive results since the gold is barely visible. “Can you give it back when you’re done?”

“Sure. Remember you can’t monopolise all the gold under this tent though.”

Not picking up on the quip, Yuuri grabs the tube and bypasses his workstation to join Chris. Since the very beginning, Yuuri has always baked right behind him, and while he’d rather be behind Viktor, it has become a familiar habit neither of them wants to break.

All in all, it’s probably for the best. No risk of getting distracted by Viktor’s ass.

“Thank you kitten,” Chris says – Yuuri has given up on understanding the how and the why of this nickname ages ago – before sprinkling the gold dust over his meringue garden. Catching Yuuri’s admiring gaze, he explains, “It’s inspired by my parents’ garden. Best place in the world.”

A dozen flowers are covering the top of an entremets. Buds, roses, tulips. White, pink, multicoloured. Also a few mushrooms. By its side, little fences made of sponge fingers are laid on the baking sheet, and Yuuri guesses Chris will stick them against the edges of the cake right at the end to perfect the illusion of his garden.

It’s so pretty. Amongst these sugary flowers, however, Yuuri also sees a sharp determination to steal the golden hat off his head. Chris has never hidden his desire to win, and has been working relentlessly to regain his crown and put an end to this tango occurring between Yuuri and Viktor. “Congrats, and remember to let someone other than Viktor win next time, okay?” he told Yuuri last week, punctuating his teasing warning with a wink.

At this point, anyone could win and anyone could leave. There have been small accidents such as melted ice cream and burned biscuits, but nothing that could overshadow the overall success (Phichit didn’t miss his chance to point out how happy he was that no one “bombed the Alaska bombe”). The forecasts are a big blur. It’s all the more stressful.

“Yuuri! Yuuri!”

“Do you need help, Sara?”

“It’s not me… I heard something weird coming from your oven.”

“What?”

Yuuri hurries back to his oven and his face falls. His meringue has broken in several pieces, the biggest one lying by the mould it was initially stuck against.

“Oh no, no, no…”

He takes it out, the heat burning his skin through his gloves, and assesses the damage.

He doesn’t understand. It looked perfect a few minutes ago. He made sure it didn’t cool too fast. So how did it happen? Maybe he beat the whites too quickly, which formed air bubbles. Maybe the cracks had been developing between the bricks for a while, too well hidden for him to have noticed just by looking through the glass. Meringue is unpredictable, that’s why he hates it.

He picks up two pieces of the collapsed dome that was supposed to cover his half-spherical cake perfectly and tries to assemble them around it. While the colour hasn’t darkened, cracks are now visible all over the previously clean bricks – which wouldn’t have been a big deal, had the igloo held up.

He holds the parts together, powerless, as he racks his brain to find a last minute solution. Phichit warns them again about the few minutes they have left, which usually fires him up. Right now, it has the exact opposite effect.

“Great,” Yuuri mutters. “Just fantastic.”

He lets out an exasperated sigh to conceal the imminent tears. What should he do? He struggles to think under stress. There’s no way he can do it all over again, and he’s got nothing to glue it back together. Even if he tried, chances are it would look like those patchwork collages he used to make when he was six.

Does it mean… He’ll have to bring this mess to the judges?

Oh God. He can already picture Lilia’s stern look and hear Minako’s cutting remarks. _Wow, what is that? Just because you’re the golden hat doesn’t mean you should take it for granted. Pull yourself together._

Inconceivable.

How is he going to justify it? ‘Design is not everything’? As if. He’s promised them a penguin house. No matter how good it tastes (if it even does), they’ll judge him over his failure to deliver.

His shoulders sag. He’s spent almost three hours nonstop on this cake, making things that would have taken him twice as much time at home, and this is what he gets.

He only has himself to blame though. He’s the one who made a mistake. He should have piped the meringue directly onto the cake. It would have been more basic, but at least it would have looked like something. 

Who does he think he is? Playing the sorcerer’s apprentice by using techniques he hasn’t mastered when he might be in danger this week? He doesn’t have JJ’s or Chris’s confidence. He doesn’t have Ketty’s or Guang Hong’s innovative sense. He doesn’t have Sara’s or Otabek’s meticulosity. And he definitely doesn’t have Viktor’s genius.

In the end, what does he have? What are his qualities as a baker?

The thought spiral spins faster and faster, until he can’t even look at his own cake.

The golden hat suddenly feels too hot on his head. He doesn’t deserve to wear it. He takes it off, not bothering fixing his cowlicked hair, puts it near the corner of his station and makes a beeline for the tent’s back entrance.

“Yuuri…” Sara says with more compassion than Yuuri can handle.

“I need to get some air,” Yuuri replies without looking back, choking on the sobs welling up in his throat.

This is why he could never bake on TV. No way he’d stand the cameras aimed at his blotchy face, recording his stifled cries that would later be sent out to a film editor and broadcasted with a voice-over saying ‘If you can‘t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, says the proverb. Unable to handle the pressure after breaking his meringue, Yuuri runs away to the terrace’ or some crap like that.

Ironic how baking had started as an anxiety-relief, and how it gradually turned into one of its sources. This is figure skating all over again. What begins as a passion that brings him joy always ends up devouring his life, and the more it does, the more he strives to make everything perfect, until he simply cannot do anything anymore.

The world seems to freeze whenever he isolates himself to cry. Like in junior high school, when he left the class on the pretext of needing to go to the nurse’s office and locked himself in a bathroom stall – he forgot why. Or at sixteen, when he couldn’t get out of the rink’s changing room, too focused on the irrational thought that he was going to mess up practice and disappoint his coach.

Everything ceases to exist, but only from his point of view. Class keeps going, his coach grows impatient at the center of the ice, and his friends back in the tent do their best to finish their cake on time. Meanwhile, he stands here, frozen and unable to catch up.

He jeopardises his spot in the competition with each passing second, he knows it. This thought alone should be enough for him to stir himself and get back inside the tent. Instead, it further discourages him. He lives through a constant battle between discordant voices, what his mind tells him and what he knows deep down, and he needs a moment of peace. He needs to let the quiet wind rustling through the pines in the park drown the voices, even if now is not the time.

Footsteps coming closer make him wipe his eyes, though he keeps his back turned. His bets are on Phichit. He might not be a baker, but in his quality of coordinator and personal cheerleader, he’s an expert at detecting mood drops and motivation loss. A conversation sprinkled with baking puns, an energetic shoulder massage, encouraging nicknames such as “champion”, and he gets the most upset bakers fired up again.

In lieu of a massage, a hand rests on Yuuri’s back, stroking lightly.

“Do you want to sit down for a minute?”

Yuuri blanches, his heart rate skyrocketing. That voice. He turns his head to the side, very slowly, until Viktor’s worried blue eyes appear in his field of vision.

Crap. Crap crap crap.

Only now does he realise how noisy his outburst had been. That everyone saw him, including Viktor. Viktor saw everything about his destroyed meringue, his bad temper, his storming out… and his crying.

“No, I…” Having Viktor of all people as a witness to his weakness is so unbearable Yuuri jerks away from the comforting hand. “I don’t need anything. Please don’t mind me.”

Viktor lets his hand fall, pained confusion flashing across his face, and Yuuri feels immediate regret. Tears well up in his eyes again at the thought that Viktor has dropped his swans and berries to run after him, risking falling behind or, worse, not finishing, only to be rejected. Now, not only does Viktor think he’s weak, but he has probably also added “obnoxious” to the list.

Yuuri has no choice, though. He can‘t drag Viktor down with him, he won't accept it. To hell with his moment of peace.

“Let’s go back.”

“Yuuri, it’s okay to take a minute–”

“No, I can’t, there’s no time…”

His voice cracks on the final word. He brings his hand to his mouth in an attempt to muffle a sob.

Next thing he knows…

He doesn’t make the first move. He’s sure of it. He would never willingly bury his head into Viktor’s shoulder and stain his shirt with tears. Yet the second of hesitation before Viktor wraps his arms around Yuuri, the awkward pat on his back… It suggests that Viktor hasn’t initiated it either. Either way, here they are, two stubborn magnets pressed against each other, Yuuri breathing in Viktor’s smell – a mixture of floral fragrance and cooked sugar – and Viktor’s fingers caressing the hair on the nape of Yuuri’s neck.

The strangest thing is that Yuuri doesn’t feel like he has missed something. Holding Viktor in his arms appears to be the only obvious, natural continuation of things. It feels… right. So right, in fact, that he wonders how he could have handled five weeks without doing it.

“Deep breaths.” Viktor steps back so he can see Yuuri’s face, without letting go. “Look, I… I know we don’t know each other very well, so you’re probably surprised to see me…”

Yuuri stops himself from sniffing.

“…but you weren’t coming back and I got worried. What do you have left to do? It helps to recap out loud.”

When Yuuri tries to reply, only a hiccup comes out, followed by an embarrassed laugh. Viktor reaches into his pocket and takes out a pack of tissues. Yuuri accepts it gratefully and turns away. He hates blowing his nose in front of someone else, especially if that someone else happens to be a beautiful man he has a massive crush on. He puts the balled-up tissue into his jeans’ pocket, making a mental note to throw it away later.

“No, no, you can keep it,” Viktor says when Yuuri tries to give the pack of tissues back. “Tell me what I can do for you. I want to help.”

“I don’t want you to waste time because of me,” Yuuri finally manages to say, even if his voice still sounds quavering.

“I’m not. We’re all in the same boat here. Just because it’s a competition doesn’t mean we can’t support each other. It’s not dog-eat-dog. Remember when you helped Otabek finish his signature the other day?”

“I could help him only because I was done myself. You’re not.”

“Everything I have left to do for my decoration has to be done at the last minute. And even then…” Viktor bites his lip, letting the end of the sentence die. “Tell me.”

“I was… so close. All I had to do was cover my cake with my igloo and finish decorating. I was too confident because I was way ahead for the first time during a showstopper, and now it’s all ruined. And it’s not fixable. It would be humiliating to show that to Lilia and Minako, but I can’t start over either, it’s too late…”

“What makes you think it’s unfixable?”

“Well… Once the meringue is broken…”

“We’ll make do. I’ve salvaged cakes in worse shape, believe me. You have a right to be discouraged, but it’s not the end of the world, yeah? It happens to the best.”

Yuuri takes off his smudged glasses, the world suddenly more colourful, albeit blurry. Using a tissue to clean them would scratch the lenses, so he has to resort to finishing the challenge with marks of tears. He glances at his watch; he’s been here less longer than he thought.

Ten minutes. He’ll keep fighting only for ten more minutes. He’ll regret it if he doesn’t.

“I… need to find a way to glue the pieces back together, and make sure the cracks aren’t too visible.”

“Then let’s glue back the igloo.”

Yuuri snorts loudly, both at the bad pun and at Viktor’s proud expression.

“Yay! I made you laugh!”

Viktor smiles from ear to ear with unabashed fondness. Yuuri runs his fingers along the darkened spots on Viktor’s shirt.

“I made a mess.”

“Aww, don’t worry. It’s a baking contest, who comes out of it spotless?”

“I’m so sorry. For… well,” Yuuri vaguely gestures at his face, “all this. It’s so embarrassing.”

“Please don’t say that,” Viktor says in gentle warning. “I’m not very good with people crying in front of me, but I understand. We all do, we’ve all cried over cakes here.” He puts his hand on Yuuri’s shoulder, applying a light pressure. “Are you ready?”

He has to be.

Viktor steps aside and gallantly gestures towards the tent’s entrance. “After you.”

One quick hand-washing later, they dash towards Yuuri’s station. Sara mouths ‘You okay?’ as they pass by her, and Yuuri nods. She isn’t convinced by his smile, but she doesn’t insist. Unfortunately for Yuuri, he’s the type of crier who looks like they’ve bathed their head in a bowl of peeled onions.

“Wait…” Viktor inspects the pieces of meringue, carefully touching them. “You piped the bricks one by one all around the mould?”

“Uh… Yes.”

Viktor lets out a whistle. “Brilliant.”

Yuuri bursts into giggles. The nerves, probably. His igloo is in shreds, and Viktor still manages to find it impressive.

“No but look! It’s fixable.” Viktor slots together two pieces against the cake, trying to picture the igloo in its entirety. “There aren’t that many pieces and they’re quite big, we’re in luck! Let’s see…”

He mumbles to himself in Russian, frowning. “Do you have royal icing?” he eventually asks.

“No. I thought about it... I don’t have time to make it, though. And it’s very sugary.”

“So is meringue.” Viktor smirks. “At this point, you wouldn’t notice the difference.”

Yuuri is about to point out that Lilia and Minako will, that they can detect any superfluous gram of sugar at a glance, when Viktor hollers, “Attention please! Does anyone have extra royal icing?”

Every baker in the front rows turns back, clearly astounded to see the two of them behind the same workstation. Chris’s eyes dart from Yuuri’s face reddened from the tears to Viktor to the cake, his eyebrows raised. No words needed, he’s pieced the events together from this image alone.

Unfortunately, amongst the few people who used royal icing, no one has any left.

“Don’t worry,” Viktor tells Yuuri, “we’ll figure something out.”

“Will that be enough?”

Yuuri and Viktor almost jump, not having heard Otabek come closer. He’s holding out a pastry bag half-filled with white icing, his expression stoic as he looks at Yuuri straight in the eye.

“But… What about you?” 

Otabek shakes his head. “I made more than I needed and I’m done using it. Take as much as you want. Careful, this one dries very quickly.”

“Amazing!” Viktor claps his hands. “Exactly what we need!”

“Well, thank you so much, really.”

Albeit sincere, this thank-you sounds inadequate to Yuuri’s ears. Otabek replies with a thumbs up and runs back to his station. Yuuri briefly wonders if it’s a selfless act or a way to repay him for his help the other day.

Viktor draws a layer of icing along the edge of a meringue piece, thick enough for it to stick but thin enough for it not to overflow.

“Better play it safe. If there are holes remaining, we’ll fill them up later.”

They adjoin the two fitting pieces and maintain them together to give the icing time to dry, their arms touching. After what feels like a century, Viktor gives Yuuri a questioning look and Yuuri nods in return. Viktor carefully lets go and, miracle of miracles, the two pieces remain stuck together.

“Ta-da!” Viktor exclaims, sounding even more delighted than Yuuri is. “Better than mortar!”

A massive weight is lifted off Yuuri’s shoulders. They know it works, now they only need to be quick. They apply the icing in turns and, little by little, piece half the igloo back together. The grooves of royal icing expose the accident in a fairly obvious way, but it no longer seems as catastrophic as it did a few minutes ago.

While waiting for the icing to dry, Viktor observes Yuuri’s decoration. He coos over the smallest details. It’s adorable, but this wave of compliments is so heartfelt and passionate Yuuri doesn’t know what to do with himself.

The one element Viktor swoons over the most is the penguin couple standing over the frozen pond. Yuuri has to admit he’s very proud of them. They’re holding hands, their necks adorned with little bow ties. Yuuri has never been a fan of gender-based dress codes, because how can wearing a bowtie or a flower tell anything about one’s gender identity? Still, making his penguins explicitly male without leaving room for imagination, no matter how small the gesture is, mattered a lot to him.

“Hold on– Oh my God, they’re wearing little skates! They’re skating!”

“Hey, no spoilers, please!” Phichit shouts from where he’s standing, and Viktor raises a hand in apology.

“I’m not great with marzipan,” he continues, lowering his voice. “I never manage to do exactly what I want.”

“You made roses the other day.”

“And there you had the full extent of my marzipan abilities.”

Yuuri fixes a wobbly piece, pensive. He doesn’t know if he should say it. Skating is not a topic he can talk about in passing. On the other hand, if he wants Viktor to know him better… Besides, maybe he won’t get the chance again.

“It was a bit self-indulging.”

“What was?” Viktor asks.

“The skating penguins. I've been ice skating since I was five and I never got to include this in my cakes. So I thought, why not…”

That’s not quite true. When he was still a beginner, he tried to bake a skate-shaped cake and it got so puffy it looked more like a giant’s shoe than anything else. He’s starting to think that mixing his two passions together is a jinx.

“No way,” Viktor says.

“What?”

“ _I_ have been skating since I was five.”

Yuuri’s jaw drops. He waits for the moment he exclaims ‘I was kidding! Oh, your face!’. It never comes. Cheeks turning pink, Viktor stares at him in awe.

“Do you compete?” he asks while helping Yuuri glue the fragment that was supposed to represent the igloo’s door.

“No. I mean, not anymore. I used to take part in local and regional competitions, but… I had to stop.”

“I see. Same for me. I thought very seriously about going professional at some point. I guess life had other plans for me.” Viktor carefully lets go of the door. It remains standing. “I wonder how different my life would have been, had I followed the figure skating path. Who knows? Maybe we would still have met on the ice.”

“Who knows,” Yuuri echoes.

“Kitten, before I forget, here’s the gold dust.”

“Ah, yeah, thank you Chris. You can put it…” His voice trails off. “Right here…”

Chris looks like someone who’s gladly going to fuck things up. Yuuri pretends to ignore it by redirecting his attention to the igloo, silently begging that whatever Chris has in mind, he just keeps it in there.

“So,” he says with a velvety voice, “doing good with filling up the holes?”

The pastry bag slips from Yuuri’s hands, which draws a thick icing line over the bricks. Cursing under his breath, he scrapes it with a knife as Chris bats his eyelashes in an innocent way with a smile that absolutely isn’t.

Of course Chris has heard their entire conversation. Definitely no concept of privacy in this tent.

“Don’t forget to be thorough,” Chris continues, and Yuuri wants to kill him. He’ll force him to eat so many meringues the mountain in his dream will seem like an appetiser in comparison.

“Your fence is falling off,” Viktor says, nodding towards the sponge fingers that have indeed slid off the cake, like it got blown away by a gust of wind sweeping through the garden.

“My- oh shit!”

Viktor smiles to himself, pleased with this timely diversion. It should be an easy fix, so Yuuri doesn’t feel guilty for being relieved. At least Chris will leave them alone for a moment.

He isn’t the first one to make jokes based on the shape of pastry bags, far from it, but this is the last thing Yuuri needs right now. His hands are clammy and shaking because of the stress, and Viktor sees fit to stand closer, almost pressed against him, help him incline the pastry bag better and murmur “There, slowly” as Yuuri squeezes it. With the most serious look on his face. How dare he.

“Keep it up!” Phichit cheers. “Soon you’ll never have to make or see or even hear the word meringue ever again. In five minutes exactly!”

Saved by the bell. “Please, go finish your cake,” Yuuri urges, flushed scarlet, taking the opportunity to step away. “I’ll manage.”

“Okay. You heard Phichit, keep it up.”

Viktor holds out his hand and they high-five. Once he walks away, the colony of butterflies dancing in Yuuri’s stomach calms down and he breathes out, relieved he can focus again. He still has a lot on his plate. Five pieces of meringue, to be exact, to glue in five minutes. Yuuri puts any thought that doesn’t revolve around his cake aside and works at full speed until Phichit ticks away the final seconds.

“10… 9…”

He slots the last piece with shaky fingers. Damn, he thought he’d have more time left to polish the decoration…

“…8… 7… Quick, Guang Hong, Ketty, go, go, go! 6… 5… 4…”

He sprinkles the snow with gold dust as his final touch.

“3… 2… 1… Time’s up! Raise your hands!”

He slams the tube down on the table and does as Phichit says.

“Wow, I see beautiful things from where I am… Congratulations, you survived this week, I’m so proud of you all and you should be as well! Take some time to unwind before the queens arrive!”

They breathe a collective sigh of relief and applaud alongside Phichit. JJ cheers, fingers forming his two distinctive ‘J’s up in the air. Guang Hong high-fives Otabek, Sara pulls Ketty into an excited hug… and Yuuri grabs the pastry bag lying by the sink, turning it inside out to rinse and scrub it before the icing leftovers solidify.

He doesn’t feel legitimate enough to join the jubilation. Sure, he’s fixed his mess and finished on time, but… Until now, he’s never needed help to finish a cake. He hasn’t felt so out of place while baking in a while, and it hurts.

Moreover, while he can’t help it, he hates this impression of being so ungrateful only for a matter of wounded pride. He needs to thank Viktor, and not just with vague words. The question is: how?

“Boo.”

Yuuri yelps, dropping the bag and the washing up brush in the sink as Chris slings an arm around his shoulders to give him a bone-crushing side hug. He sighs and braces himself for whatever pastry bag-related innuendo Chris has left in stock.

“Feeling better?”

“…Oh. Yeah, thank you.”

“Good. It’s no fun to beat you when you aren’t feeling your best.” Chris releases him, lazily resting his arm on Yuuri’s shoulders. “I see you managed to patch everything up?”

“Yeah, just in time. It’s not as neat as I hoped for, though.”

“Same. My fence is kind of crooked now. But hey, let’s not rip them apart before the queens do, it’ll happen soon enough.”

Yuuri makes a face.

“Relax,” Chris pats his shoulder with a chuckle, “I’m kidding! By the way, it was nice of Viktor to help you, even though he wasn’t finished himself.”

“I didn’t ask him to. I never would have. He did it because he wanted to.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Chris pauses. “Not at all. Though I’ve never seen him go that far.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you hadn’t finished the showstopper… I’m not saying you would’ve been eliminated, but it would’ve increased the chances, that’s for certain. And Viktor…” Chris casts a strange look at him. “He really doesn’t want you to leave. Neither do I, though. You keep us all on our toes, it'd be a shame to lose that.”

“I… keep you on your toes?”

Chris’s face lights up and then, as if the conversation never happened, he grabs the golden hat still resting on the corner and settles it on his head. Yuuri lets him, too disconcerted to protest.

“Hmm… Nice. Neither of your heads has enlarged it or anything. It still fits snugly. It’s hard not to believe it was made for me…”

“I’d say you’re the one getting a big head,” Viktor steps in, lifting the hat off Chris’s head and setting it on Yuuri’s with a wink. He’s removed his clips and his fringe is now falling into his left eye.

“Ooh, Viktor! How long have you been here?”

“Why? Were you badmouthing me?”

Chris gasps, falsely shocked. “You wound me. How dare you accuse me of such a thing? If you’ll excuse me, I need a moment to collect myself.”

He walks away, his head held high. Viktor grins at Yuuri and holds out his hands, palms up.

“You did it!” Instead of going for a regular high-five, Viktor keeps his palms against Yuuri’s and intertwines their fingers. “I knew you could do it.”

“Thanks,” Yuuri says in a low, distant voice, Chris’s words ringing in his head.

Chris reminds him at every occasion that he views him, and probably Viktor too, as someone who spices up the competition and makes things more interesting. That doesn’t mean they can’t chat and joke around over breakfast. However, it didn’t cross his mind that Viktor might consider him the same way. As a valuable rival.

Something doesn’t hold up. Viktor’s speech about how this competition is not dog-eat-dog… It seemed sincere. And all these touches… In five weeks of competition, Yuuri has never seen Viktor casually touch or hug someone else. Yet today, Viktor revealed himself as a very tactile person, and Yuuri refuses to believe it has anything to do with a ‘keep your rivals closer’ case. It doesn’t fit Viktor’s image.

He remembers Sara’s tears after Mila’s elimination, how Mila touched her cheek and reassured her. “We’ll meet again, Sara”. The bonds forged through the bake off are real and go beyond competition spirit.

Too late though. The seed of doubt has been planted, and it’s starting to germinate. After all, he barely knows Viktor.

“What’s wrong?” Viktor tilts his head. “Aren’t you proud of yourself? You should be.”

“I… I wanted to thank you.” He bows his head without letting go of Viktor’s hands, which makes it much less solemn than intended. “I could never have made it without you.”

Yuuri is well-advised to not address the heart of his doubts: if Chris thinks he’s being discreet, trying to eavesdrop by pretending to clean up his station, he’s ridiculously mistaken.

“You honour me, but I disagree. All I did was give you support when you needed it. The original idea? The flavours? The actual cake? They all came from you. You don’t need anyone to be an incredible baker.”

“Please…”

“I mean it. How about your banana millefeuille, three weeks ago? It was to die for. And your treasure chest with all the dorayaki inside for the ‘childhood memories’ themed week? God, I wish I could bake things like that.”

Yuuri blushes. The pirate chest, especially the dorayaki decorated like gold coins, remains to this day the contest dessert he’s the most proud of. It even earned him a tearful hug from Minako, for it ‘tasted like her childhood’.

“You remembered?”

“I remember all your cakes,” Viktor replies like it goes without saying. “And I taste them all. You never noticed?” His expression turns serious. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Yuuri sneaks a look at Chris. Hopefully it’s not something too intimate. Viktor hesitates for a few seconds then takes the plunge.

“I’m really sad I couldn’t have tasted your dog macarons,” he whispers. “They looked delicious.”

"What? We never made macarons during the contest–"

Yuuri’s eyes widen, the colony of butterflies coming back in full force as it dawns on him. His caramel dog macarons. The latest post on his Instagram, right before he left Japan for the _BBBO_.

“How… How did you…”

“Sorry sorry, don’t mind me!” Armed with his camera, Phichit passes by them, doing the rounds to immortalise every cake before they’re ripped apart by Lilia and Minako’s merciless forks. Knowing he needs space to take every angle and not be bothered by shadows or stray light, Viktor drags Yuuri by the hand at the end of the aisle, away from any eavesdropping.

"I got it right then.” Viktor smiles softly. He squeezes Yuuri’s hand. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

“How did you know?”

“I had doubts since the first day I saw your cakes, but it took me a while to be certain. I didn’t even know your gender, and I imagine there’s more than one baking lover from Japan named Yuuri,” Viktor laughs. “Eventually I realised that your style, your cakes were so familiar it couldn’t have been a coincidence. And I have to confess, it's lovely to finally see the face behind ‘thebakingkatsudon’."

Hearing this username in real life, from Viktor’s mouth… It sends a shiver down Yuuri’s spine. 

“So… you follow me on Insta.” He nods to himself for far too long. “Right. Okay.”

Viktor coyly hunches his shoulders. “What would you say if I told you I’ve been following you since the ‘katsu993’ days?”

A loud squeak comes out of Yuuri’s mouth. The username that encompasses so many parts of his dark past. He did a thorough clean up of his old posts several months ago, and his mistakes and dubious choices made him cringe.

“I barely had any followers back then.”

“You were pretty good already! It was great watching you progress and gain confidence over time. Not to be like ‘I liked it before it became popular’, but I guess you could say I’ve been a fan from the outset.”

“I… I don’t know what to say.” Yuuri taps the floor with the tip of his shoe, uncomfortable. He never thought meeting a fan would ever happen, so he never reflected on how he should behave in this situation.

“Well, I have something I’ve always wanted to say!” Viktor now holds Yuuri’s hand in both of his, visibly restraining himself from bouncing up and down. “I love that you don’t simply include links to the recipes on your pics, you also take the time to translate them into English. It must be so much work.”

“Oh… thank you.” The character limits on Instagram forced him to create a separate blog just for this purpose. It did take time, especially at the beginning when he wasn’t familiar with the English technical terms, but none of his non-Japanese followers ever commented about it. Until now. “I’ve been thinking about stopping, I wasn’t sure if it was of use to anyone.”

“What? Please, no! I swear it is! I read everything you write, and I’m far from the only one. I tried one of your recipes once, the momiji manju.”

“Wait, you did? How did it go?”

“…Not so well.” Viktor laughs. “Many ingredients were not available in Russia, I had to make do. It was good, but a far cry from your original recipe. I was frustrated.”

Yuuri is all too familiar with the problem. Some supplies are so rare in Japan he’d need to spend a fortune to get his hands on them. His face softens. “I didn’t think you would have tried my recipes. Nor that you could be a fan.”

“Is it that surprising?”

“Well… Yeah. Your cakes are some of the best I’ve ever eaten in my life. You’re a genius. No, I mean…” Damn. He never intended to use that word in front of Viktor. “I’m not saying it’s a natural gift for you, it would be an insult to your hard work, baking is so precise and complex and exhausting and I don’t want to devalue you by implying–”

Viktor’s finger on his lips puts an end to the awkward digression. “Don’t worry. I got it.”

His finger gently draws a line along Yuuri’s chin, and Yuuri doesn’t know what to think anymore. As a ‘fan’ (Yuuri struggles to let go of the metaphorical quotation marks), it would make sense for Viktor to want to confront his skills with Yuuri’s. Except his excitement while talking to him about his Instagram persona was so pure, so genuine…

Not that a rivalry spirit is intrinsically wrong, Chris’s friendship with Yuuri proves it. It’s just not the type of relationship Yuuri wants with Viktor.

Like he needed that kind of inner debate a few minutes before being judged. Damn Chris.

“It makes me really happy,” Viktor lets go of Yuuri’s face to hold his hand again, “that you enjoy my work so much. There are moments when I feel completely lost too.”

“You do?”

“Oh yes. I just don’t let it show.” The touch of sadness in Viktor’s eyes, despite his attempt at hiding it behind a smile, makes Yuuri’s heart twinge. Viktor points at his cake. “This one made me doubt till the end, but I’m quite happy with the result.”

He should be much more than ‘quite happy’. Spun sugar is draped around the tower of pavlova in a transparent, gleaming cascade that seems to flow from the top, where the two loving swans bathe peacefully. Magnificent.

While it was Viktor’s choice to help him, Yuuri would never have forgiven himself if the cake had been left unfinished.

He wants to get closer and admire every detail, but Phichit will come over there to take pictures any second now.

“It looks like a wedding cake,” he says before he can stop himself.

"You think so? I did get inspiration from my dream wedding cake." Viktor arranges his fringe with his right hand, bare of any engagement ring. “I have the cake, now I only need to find my… well, my matching swan.” He smiles. “What about you?”

“Haha, I don’t think my cake would be suited for a wedding,” Yuuri replies nervously, “even without the broken meringue–”

“No, no, I mean… Your penguins? Are they inspired by… real people?”

“Hey Yuuri?” Phichit calls as he walks across the aisle towards Viktor’s station for a new series of photographs. “Your gay skating penguins?” He kisses the tips of his fingers. “Exceptional.”

“Uh… Thanks, Phichit.” In his imaginary list of things that prevent him from having an uninterrupted conversation with Viktor, below ‘zero concept of privacy’ and ‘Chris’s jokes’, Yuuri adds ‘the most unfortunate timing you could imagine’. “And… no, not particularly,” he tells Viktor, “I didn’t think about that.”

Viktor nods without comment. Yuuri can’t even look him in the eye.

He’s not clueless. He can perfectly tell when he’s being flirted at – and Viktor’s ways, despite the metaphors, are far from subtle. And he hates that he can’t reciprocate just because he isn’t a hundred percent certain of Viktor’s intentions. If it were all an act...

Enough. Yuuri needs to be sure. An idea emerges as Viktor starts talking about the upcoming weekend and how he’s looking forward to spend the next few days doing something other than memorising recipes, even though he has no plans yet.

“We could go skating together,” Yuuri says, interrupting the chattering. “I mean, if you want to.”

Viktor’s face glows up. “If I want to? It’s a brilliant idea! I know where we can find an ice rink. It’s not that far from the hotel but we’ll have to go by bus, we’ll check the schedule tonight.” 

“There’s just one thing…” Guilt gnaws at the pit of Yuuri’s stomach as he speaks. Like he’s lying to Viktor, even though he genuinely wants to go skating with him. Only as leisure, not as a way to measure who’s the best. And if Viktor only views him as a rival, he won’t be interested in such a plan. “We won't be able to do jumps or anything with borrowed skates.”

“I know!” Viktor says, joyful. “So what? As long as we have fun! We could also go to a museum, or a café?”

“Oh… Yes, of course,” Yuuri replies, a huge smile growing on his face. Guilt turns into excitement and he intertwines their fingers again, stroking the back of Viktor’s hand with his thumb in silent apology for doubting. “Anything you want.”

It strikes him that they’re standing at the end of an alley, holding hands and surrounded by predominantly white cakes.

“So, would it be like… some official fan meeting?”

“No!” It’s obvious Viktor is playing coy, and Yuuri fell for the hook like a beginner. “No,” he repeats more quietly.

“A friend day trip then?” Viktor winks. 

Yuuri shuffles his feet, keeping his eyes to the ground despite his desire to see Viktor’s expression.

“More like… a date.”

“Attention please!” Phichit yells, his hands on each side of his mouth like a megaphone. “The queens are coming!”

Arms linked, displaying a mischievous expression for show, Lilia and Minako enter the tent as everyone runs back to their posts, offering them a full view of Viktor and Yuuri still holding hands and not making a move to split apart.

Only when Minako raises an eyebrow, half-teasing half-impatient, do they snap out of it.

“Let’s talk about it later, okay?” Viktor fixes the position of Yuuri’s hat, takes his face between his hands and presses a soft kiss to his forehead, to everyone’s delight. “No stress. Everything is going to be fine.”

Stunned, Yuuri barely registers the giggles and teasing wolf-whistles as he heads for his station, his forehead tingling from the memory of Viktor’s lips. He brushes it with his fingertips, just a bit, as though actually touching it would erase the kiss. Chris steps back to rest against the front of Yuuri’s station, more or less casually.

“About the banana millefeuille,” he whispers, only loud enough for Yuuri to hear, “his exact word was ‘orgasmic’.”

“So, did you have fun?” Minako asks, saving him from having to find a good comeback.

Her impudence makes every participant laugh. It quickly turns into nervous silence when she continues, “Hope you did, because as you know, this is when things get serious.”

“This week is drawing to a close,” Lilia says, “and we don’t need to remind you that the results for this last challenge will affect our final decision as to who will leave us tonight.”

“No pressure, basically!” Phichit’s warm laugh melts the tension a bit. “But all their cakes are gorgeous… can’t you make an exception and keep everybody? Just for this week? Please?”

“Rules are rules, Phichit,” Lilia replies, breaking her stern mask to offer him one of her rare smiles.

**********

Yuuri stands in front of the judges’ table, ramrod straight. They are sticklers for good physical position, and he strives to radiate confidence and discipline despite his nervousness and exhaustion.

Minako inspects the patched-up dome, tapping it with the back of her fork as if to test its solidity. Thankfully, nothing falls off.

“Earthquake in Antarctica?” she teases, and Yuuri huffs out a laugh.

“It seems meringue gave you a hard time this week,” Lilia says.

“He fought till the end,” Phichit, bless him, points out. “I’m a witness.”

“You put a lot of care into the decoration, it shows. It’s wintery, but also very… warm. You’re telling us a sweet story.” Minako seizes a knife. “Let’s have a taste, shall we?”

Yuuri winces as the knife dives into the cake. Always an unpleasant moment, to see the visual effect he put hours of work into get ruined in a split second. The royal icing did the job though, since the meringue’s most fragile spots don’t crumble under the knife’s sharp weight. Minako serves a generous slice to Lilia, who accepts it with a “Thank you dear”.

Minako nods in satisfaction. “The layers are neat and regular. It’s beautiful to look at. Bavarian cream-inspired, right? What flavours did you choose?”

“Hazelnut biscuit, passion fruit mousse, vanilla ganache.”

“A good association.” Lilia points her fork at Yuuri in warning. “No room for error.”

His heart beats quicker when they bring the first bite to their mouths. Their expressions don’t reveal any clue about their thoughts. Another bite. Three hours of baking, yet this one minute feels the longest.

Minako puts her plate down.

“So.” Yuuri recognises the tone that announces the negative points. He holds his breath. “The meringue? Far, far too sugary. Mostly a second effect of the royal icing, sadly this is all we get out of it. And it’s a shame because it’s well cooked.”

“However, as promised, the cake’s flavours work well together,” Lilia says. “It tastes fresh, light. The cold and warm thematic is definitely present. If I may ask, wasn’t the meringue supposed to adhere to the ganache? Even though it broke, you can see it’s independent from the cake.”

“I wanted it to look like the meringue contained a surprise cake that would be revealed by lifting it up,” Yuuri explains.

They look skeptical, to say the least. On second thought, Yuuri probably should have mentioned it before they cut the cake.

“It’s a nice idea, but you made things harder for yourself for no reason,” Minako says. “In my opinion, the biggest problem isn’t that your meringue broke. The problem is that it doesn’t harmonise with the cake. Let me be clear, it’s delicious in and of itself.” She shows her empty plate save for the meringue to prove her point. “But considering we asked for meringue-themed creations… You can understand why I’m in a bit of a pickle.”

“The method was…” Lilia interrupts herself as Phichit, who’s sneaked between her and Minako, points insistently at her plate. She nods once and he grabs it, not even waiting to be back on his seat to take a bite despite having eaten three slices from previous competitors’ cakes already. “Hm. Like I was saying, the method was ambitious. You take risks, this is something we appreciate about you. It’s just a shame the risk didn’t pay off this time.”

“I know.”

It’s much better than Yuuri expected. Still, a lump of disappointment builds in his throat.

“Chin up!” Minako exclaims upon noticing Yuuri’s defeated face. “Falling off the horse happens to us all, so now, get back on the saddle. Okay?”

Yuuri nods, the words sparking a small light of hope. If they intended to eject him, Minako wouldn’t have implied he’ll do better next time.

Right?

With Sara’s help, Yuuri carries his cake back to his station to leave room for the next participant, his mind swarming with uncertainty. He gives Viktor a small smile with a resigned shrug. Viktor winks in response, confidently, without an ounce of pity.

As the judging goes on, something shifts within Yuuri. He’s made his peace with the fact that he won’t be crowned with the golden hat this week. The symbol behind it matters a lot to him, he won’t lie, but not wearing it doesn’t make him a failure. He expected the worst from the jury, and now…

Now, he decides he won’t leave this week. Nor the week after that. It isn’t a vain wish, or some kind of naive positivity. He will go all the way to the final, by Viktor’s side. They will bake marvellous cakes. They will exchange secret tricks. They will laugh at Lilia’s absurd technical challenges. They will maybe lose hope and cry, and they will support each other through it, until that fateful day. Yuuri can feel it in his bones.

Either way, the die has been cast. There is nothing he can do but wait. So it is with a light, giddy heart that he redirects his thoughts to his new, second biggest priority.

Tomorrow, he’s got a date.

**Author's Note:**

> (Need I mention that they will, indeed, go all the way to the final together...?)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed reading <3
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://piecesofbrokenrecollections.tumblr.com)


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